Chapter Three
CHELSEA HAD BEEN IN many rooms in her life that weren't designed for people like her.
Hospital rooms, mostly, which were designed for bodies rather than people, and before that, Francine's living room, which was designed for photographs rather than living.
But this conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of Cannizzaro Tower was something else entirely.
For starters, there was no long table. No parade of chairs arranged for maximum intimidation, no speakerphone crouching in the center like a spider waiting for a call.
Instead, there was a living area that looked like it belonged in a magazine Chelsea would never buy—-deep leather sofas the color of espresso, a low glass table with nothing on it (who had a table with nothing on it?), and in the far corner, a wine and coffee bar with bottles she was fairly certain she couldn't afford even if she saved for a year.
The other side had a dining area, sleek and unused, as if meals happened here sometimes but were never the point.
But the thing that kept pulling her gaze was the television.
It was enormous and white-framed and mounted on the wall like it was the wall, and instead of being off or showing news or whatever billionaires watched (stock tickers?
other billionaires?), it was cycling through a series of artworks.
A Monet dissolved into a Vermeer dissolved into something modern and angular that Chelsea couldn't name but found oddly calming.
She wondered if someone had chosen these paintings specifically or if they came preloaded, the way the art in her hospital room had been chosen by someone who believed that a watercolor of a lighthouse could make a person feel less like they were dying.
The entire fourth wall was glass, and Toronto glittered beyond it like something that had been polished for her arrival, which it obviously hadn't been, but that didn't stop Chelsea from feeling a small, private thrill every time she looked at it.
Three years asleep. And now this. A city made of light, thirty-four floors below, going about its business as if it had no idea that Chelsea Regis was sitting on a leather couch that probably cost more than a car, waiting for a husband she'd met approximately twelve minutes ago.
She was still processing the word husband when Johnny came back from the counter carrying a latte that he set down on the glass table with the delicacy of someone defusing a bomb.
"Here you go."
And oh, the smell.
Chelsea closed her eyes.
Coffee didn't do to her what it did to most people.
It didn't make her sharper or faster or more awake.
If anything, it did the opposite, and she'd never fully understood why until the third week of rehabilitation, when the ward's coffee machine broke and the particular ache that replaced it helped her understand what she'd actually been reaching for all those mornings.
It wasn't the caffeine.
It was the smell.
Because the smell of coffee was the smell of 6 AM in a kitchen where her father was already up, standing at the counter in his old university t-shirt, measuring grounds with the focus of a man performing surgery.
He made terrible coffee. Truly awful. But the smell of it brewing was the smell of being safe, of being small enough to sit on a kitchen stool and swing her legs, of a world where the worst thing that could happen was running out of milk.
She'd lost that world. She'd lost him. But the smell remained, and every time it reached her, something in her chest unclenched just a little, the way a fist opens when it realizes it's been holding on to something that's already gone.
"Thank you, Johnny." She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. "I really appreciate it."
Johnny shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable in the particular way people did when they weren't used to being genuinely thanked. "Just doing my job."
"I appreciate it all the same."
There was that smile again. She was so nice. Too nice, actually, for the likes of his boss, and as soon as the thought came up, he was no longer able to resist blurting out, "Why didn't you just say you were his wife?"
Chelsea hadn't had a chance to answer with the door opening, and her husband walking in.
Olivio noticed the awkwardness in the room as soon as he entered.
The boy was standing too close to the couch, holding an empty tray against his chest like a shield, and his wife was looking up at Johnny with an expression that could only be described as mid-sentence.
His expression turned inscrutable as Johnny awkwardly excused himself before leaving, but the tips of the boy's ears were crimson, and Olivio absorbed that the way he absorbed everything—-instantly, completely, without forgetting.
His wife, meanwhile, was about to stand up. He saw her left hand go to the armrest first, the same bracing gesture he'd noticed in the hallway, and he was across the room before she could push herself to her feet.
"There's no need to rise on my account."
A smile touched her lips. The tone he used, the speed with which he'd crossed the room to get to her—-all of it was recognizable to a girl who'd spent her whole life watching people's actions for what they really meant rather than what they said.
"I'm sorry about my limp. But it's not as serious as it looks. My doctor believes it will get better in time."
Olivio stared down at her moodily. "Did you get it from the accident?"
"Yes. Did Edgar tell you?"
"He gave me the essentials."
If that were the case, then did that mean he already knew why she had come here?
The thought had her quickly looking away as she fought off a blush, not realizing that this made her seem like she was gazing outside the conference room, through the interior windows that revealed the hallway, where Johnny was still standing and watching them.
Lost in her thoughts as she was, Chelsea didn't even see anything, but Olivio did, and his jaw tightened a fraction.
"It seems you've got yourself an admirer, Mrs. Cannizzaro."
Chelsea couldn't answer immediately, much less meet his gaze.
First, he had called her his wife. Then this.
Mrs. Cannizzaro. She had years of practice keeping her face expressionless because of Francine, but inside she was reeling, her heart breaking record after record with how fast it was pounding.
Olivio took the remote control from the side table. Enough of this.
Chelsea was startled out of her thoughts when blinds automatically rolled down in silent efficiency.
In moments, their connection to the outside world was severed, and the effect was immediate: the room shrank.
The city disappeared. The cycling artwork on the enormous screen continued its quiet rotation—-Monet to Vermeer to angular modern—-but everything else had been reduced to leather and glass and the two of them, and without the distraction of Toronto's skyline or the hallway beyond, there was nowhere left to look but at him.
She turned her gaze to him without thinking—-
Wife. Husband. Mrs. Cannizzaro.
The words flashed in her mind as soon as her gaze collided with his, and this time she could no longer prevent a blush from painting her cheeks pink.
Olivio gritted his teeth. She was blushing over that boy?
The very thought offended something in him that went far deeper than pride, and before he realized what was happening, he had already closed the distance between them, and he was seated next to her on the couch, and his wife let out a startled sound as his knees bumped into hers.
The contact was electric. Just his knee against hers, through the fabric of his trousers and the cotton of her dress, and Chelsea's entire left side lit up like a switchboard.
The color in her cheeks deepened, but this time the sight gave him complete satisfaction because it was different now. This time he knew that blush was because of him.
For the past ten years or so, women had been actively throwing themselves at him.
Heiresses at galas, models at brand events, the occasional daughter of a senator who'd been strategically seated next to him at his father's table.
He had accepted some, deflected most, and been genuinely moved by none.
This was the first time in a decade that the tables had turned, and he was the one doing the pursuing.
Before his wife left this room, he would make sure that Johnny would no longer be a threat, and he was all she would be able to think about.
He didn't understand why this mattered to him. He just knew it did, and so...
Chelsea couldn't believe it was happening all over again.
The irregular breathing and even more irregular heartbeat.
Worse was the strange consuming warmth building inside her body, making her feel restless and almost feverish, and it was so much more intense now than the elevator because there was no crowd, no mirrored wall, no twenty-eight floors of rising escape.
Just him, close enough that she could see the exact place where his jaw met his neck, close enough to count the threads in the collar of his shirt if she'd been insane enough to try, and the scent of his aftershave was back, that quiet dark complicated thing that had undone her in the elevator, and now it was everywhere because he was everywhere, taking up space the way he took up everything—-completely, without apology, as if the air in this room had always belonged to him and he was simply reclaiming it.
The longer he gazed at her, the more surreal this whole thing seemed. She almost felt delirious, almost like this was a dream—-
She saw his gaze slowly lower to her mouth, and she found herself self-consciously wetting her lips, and—-oh!
Something ignited in his eyes as soon as she did, and her mouth went dry.
"What are you thinking right now?"
Something she could never admit to him—-
"Or should I take a guess?"